Author Archives: Björn Elberling

Björn Elberling

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Bjoern.JPGAnd another (slightly updated) introductory post. Together with Tobias, I come to The Invisible College from our earlier weblog The Core.

A little bit about myself: I studied law at Kiel University, where I met Tobias when we participated in the Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition at the Walther Schücking Institute of International Law. After finishing my law studies, I worked as a Research Fellow at the Institute, where I coached the 2004/2005 Jessup and was assistant editor of the German Yearbook of International Law. After my time at the Institute, I did the German judicial traineeship (Referendariat) and passed the bar exam in November of 2009.

My academic interests – much to the chagrin of my Ph.D. supervisor – have been less and less in public international law and more and more in international and comparative criminal law, particularly criminal procedure. My Ph.D. thesis is on “The Position of the Defendant in International Criminal Proceedings – The Influence of the Historiographic Function of International Criminal Courts on their Judicial Activities“; I defended it last summer and hope to have it published soon. International criminal law has also brought me to the “Legal Capital of the World” a couple of times – I clerked with Judge Kaul at the Pre-Trial Division of the International Criminal Court in the summer of 2006 and with the defence team of Dr. Radovan Karadzic in the summer of 2009.

My approach to ICL is mostly from a comparative perspective with a focus on fair trial rights/defence questions. My approach to international law is to some extent influenced by critical approaches to international law generally and Marxist/materialist approaches more concretely. Besides ICL, I am most interested in other areas of international law which directly impact the individual (human rights law, refugee law).

My off-blog-publications include a critical evaluation of the Statute for the Special Tribunal for Lebanon in the Leiden Journal and a comment on Dr. Karadzic’s defence team troubles for the Hague Justice Portal.

“Pre-school days” of the Invisible College

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Before becoming the official blog of the Netherlands School of Human Rights Research, the Invisible College Blog was the result of the joining of forces of two earlier weblogs:

Despite the somewhat similar backgrounds of the contributors – rather recent University graduates with an interest in things international – , both blogs probably differed somewhat in their approaches: The Core focused rather tightly on those areas of international law which directly affect individuals (i.e. human rights law, international humanitarian law and international criminal law) and mostly contained rather "lawyerly" posts, while 1948 took a much broader approach, focusing on international law, politics, economics, and philosophy and featuring somewhat more essayistic posts.

Why did we call the blog ‘Invisible College’?

By joining forces, we aimed to combine the strengths of both blogs and offer our readers a variety of insights and commentaries on new developments in the international arena. We also hoped that the blog could become more than just a site for comments and analyses: The blog’s title refers to a 1977 article by Oscar Schachter ("The Invisible College of International Lawyers", 72 Northwestern University Law Review (1977) 217-226), in which he speaks of the "professional community of international lawyers" forming an "invisible college dedicated to a common intellectual enterprise". While Schachter mostly concerns himself with international lawyers who are government officials and/or career academics, it seems that the "invisible college" he speaks of has grown substantially in the 30 years since then; it now includes undergraduate and graduate students, interns with various international organisations, University researchers, attorneys working in international practice areas, NGO lawyers and many more.

Objectives of the blog

We thus intended the blog to become not only an interesting read, but an actual community resource for this diverse group. We thus published not only commentaries on international developments, but also posts on Master and Doctoral programs, summer schools, job opportunities in the field, web resources for scientific research, etc. etc. We also hoped to engage our readers and to enable them to actively contribute to a dialogue on such questions.